1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to audio engineering and, more specifically but not exclusively, to microphone arrays.
2. Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art.
With the recent availability of inexpensive, small, surface-mount MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and electret microphone devices, it is now possible to build microphone arrays having large numbers of microphone devices in ways that would have been nearly impossible just a short time ago. One interesting aspect of using surface-mount technology is that microphone devices can be mounted like any other semiconductor or passive component to a printed circuit board (PCB). Surface mounting microphone devices allows one to place a large number of microphone devices in a fast and inexpensive way. Placing the microphone devices directly on the PCB also allows one to interconnect and combine the microphone devices directly in either the analog or digital domain on the same PCB on which the microphone devices are mounted. Conventional, rigid PCB technology, however, limits the array geometry to planar configurations for the array manifold.